With political pressure at bay, till the civic body polls are conducted, the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MMBC) is using it as a window to widen its tax net and improve finances by imposing 10 per cent road tax on citizens.
The 5-year-term of the BJP-led MBMC ended in August, following which commissioner-Dilip Dhole in his capacity as administrator passed a resolution to introduce the new tax from 1, April-2023.
The erstwhile general body house had passed a resolution allowing concreting work of all major roads in the twin-city on 2, September, 2019. The estimated price tag for the road concrete project has been pegged at Rs 1,150 crore.
Staring at an acute fund crunch owing to the massive expenditure on medical infrastructure to combat the Covid pandemic, the MBMC had sought permission from the state government to raise funds from Bank of Baroda to execute the first phase of the road concreting work.
The permission to raise Rs 500 crore from the bank and an equal amount from the MMRDA was granted but tagged with conditions, including clearance of all pending instalments of existing loans, revenue augmentation and to create new sources of fund generation, timely re-payment as per the loan structure specified by the lender and no diversion of the loan amounts for any other purpose.
“The MBMC will have to pump the remaining Rs. 150 crore from its own kitty. To ensure that the conditions are fulfilled and the instalments of the loan amount are repaid on a timely basis, the administration is left with no other option but to introduce road tax in accordance with the rateable value specified under section 148 of the Maharashtra Municipal Corporation Act,” said a senior MBMC official.
Notably, the internal audit department has often given its remarks to introduce road tax, however each time the proposal was shot down by the general body.
